sunny afternoon

The pleasures of a day by the Seine were never more smilingly evoked than they are in Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating party (1881). As any visitor to France knows, the river often flows beneath leaden skies or through grimy industrial districts; but in the mind’s eye one sees it only in the timeless afternoon of French impressionism, where the season is most often summer. This is what the Seine owes to art. What art, literature and philosophy owe to the Seine is even more profound and sophisticated.

---Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir remains the best known and most popular work of art at The Phillips Collection, just as Duncan Phillips imagined it would be when he bought it in 1923. The painting captures an idyllic atmosphere as Renoir's friends share food, wine, and conversation on a balcony overlooking the Seine at the Maison Fournaise restaurant in Chatou. Parisians flocked to the Maison Fournaise to rent rowing skiffs, eat a good meal, or stay the night. The painting also reflects the changing character of French society in the mid- to late 19th century. The restaurant welcomed customers of many classes, including businessmen, society women, artists, actresses, writers, critics, seamstresses, and shop girls. This diverse group embodied a new, modern Parisian society.---click image for source...

—Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir remains the best known and most popular work of art at The Phillips Collection, just as Duncan Phillips imagined it would be when he bought it in 1923. The painting captures an idyllic atmosphere as Renoir’s friends share food, wine, and conversation on a balcony overlooking the Seine at the Maison Fournaise restaurant in Chatou. Parisians flocked to the Maison Fournaise to rent rowing skiffs, eat a good meal, or stay the night.
The painting also reflects the changing character of French society in the mid- to late 19th century. The restaurant welcomed customers of many classes, including businessmen, society women, artists, actresses, writers, critics, seamstresses, and shop girls. This diverse group embodied a new, modern Parisian society.—click image for source…

Infinite patience, detachment, and preservation of customs that hark back to a quieter, saner universe- a universe still in touch with its wellsprings- are the presents the Seine lavishes upon those who approach her closely.

The quays are one of the points where the Seine’s influence on French ways of thinking and literature is most deeply felt. “By frequenting those odd, worm-eaten volumes,” Anatole France remarked, “I gained, already as a child, a profound sense of the flowing away of things and of the universal nothingness.” If that kind of wistful, resigned pessimism is so frequent in French literature, it is because of the Seine.

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…Renoir also makes his composition more effective by adopting elements of design such as balance, repetition and harmony. A sense of movement is realized through the actions and expression of the cast and repetition is achieved through the curves of the gazebo cover, the stripes, the posts in the railing and the yellow straw hats which guide the viewers eye around the canvas.

The artists combination of thickly applied brushstrokes and more delicate ones adds to the composition, and specks of red and white make the painting easy on the eye.

In terms of balance, Renoir is extremely clever and succeeds in balancing two figures on the left with twelve on the right. By tilting the floorboards, the artist allows characters in the upper-right background to be easily visible and this adds to the feeling of intimacy and informality.Read More:http://www.artble.com/artists/pierre-auguste_renoir/paintings/luncheon_of_the_boating_party/more_information/analysis

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